


everything you had and what was left after that too

by eluna



Series: Lungs 'Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Acute Psychiatric Hospital, Angst, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Depression, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mental Institutions, POV Sam Winchester, Pre-Season/Series 01, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Stanford Era (Supernatural), Stanford Student Sam Winchester, Suicide Attempt, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 14:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18448061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: He imagines he isn’t here. He imagines that it’s summer vacation, and Dean has his own dorm room just around the corner from Sam’s; they’re both unemployed, and they while away all their time together, eating delivery and staying up late. There’s sex, but even more important than the sex is the way they touch: holding hands over Sam’s bedspread, cuddling for hours at a time, Sam cocooned within Dean’s body and the pudge he’s gaining away from hunting.“You get how this is your fault, right?” he says into the receiver when Dean calls him back, and he’s sobbing a little.At first, Dean doesn’t answer. Sam isn’t here, he’s with Dean in the summertime where nothing can tear them away from each other, and he’s happy. “That’s a horrible, horrible thing to say to someone,” Dean says finally, but before Sam can move to defend himself, Dean adds, “I’m going to hang up to call an ambulance.”





	everything you had and what was left after that too

**Author's Note:**

> This one is highly autobiographical, so please be gentle. Based on a combination of my experiences with acute psychiatric hospitals and partial hospitalization programs.
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine.

He imagines he isn’t here. He imagines that it’s summer vacation, and Dean has his own dorm room just around the corner from Sam’s; they’re both unemployed, and they while away all their time together, eating delivery and staying up late. There’s sex, but even more important than the sex is the way they touch: holding hands over Sam’s bedspread, cuddling for hours at a time, Sam cocooned within Dean’s body and the pudge he’s gaining away from hunting.

“You get how this is your fault, right?” he says into the receiver when Dean calls him back, and he’s sobbing a little.

At first, Dean doesn’t answer. Sam isn’t here, he’s with Dean in the summertime where nothing can tear them away from each other, and he’s _happy_. “That’s a horrible, horrible thing to say to someone,” Dean says finally, but before Sam can move to defend himself, Dean adds, “I’m going to hang up to call an ambulance.”

“No, I’m sorry, please don’t go, please don’t leave me alone, I don’t want to die alone, _please_ —”

“I’ll call you back,” Dean promises, but by the time the paramedics break down Sam’s door, the seizures have started and Dean still hasn’t called.

* * *

Sam spends a week in the medical hospital before he’s transferred to the psychiatric unit. He’s technically a voluntary admit, even though the hospital would have just gotten a court order to admit him involuntarily if he’d tried to refuse treatment. The nurse who processes his intake tells him that patients stay in psych for an average of seven to ten days.

For some inexplicable reason, the nurse has to test his whole skin for scars, burns, and birthmarks during intake, noting down the locations of any marks she finds. If she’s shocked by how many scars Sam has, she covers it well. She asks in a steady voice whether anyone has ever abused him physically or sexually. “No,” he says truthfully, but he’s sure she doesn’t believe him.

When the question comes up, Sam tells her, “I’m here because I’m in love with my brother.” He doesn’t know why he doesn’t lie.

It’s in his record now, though, and the psychiatrist asks him about it when he meets her for the first time the next afternoon. Dr. Patel is young, pretty, and straight to the point as she asks him to tell her more about the suicide attempt, the depression, his feelings for his brother. “I just want to be close to Dean. That’s all it really is.” She jots down a note on her pad and waits. “I’m not _attracted_ to him physically. I just want to be near him, and if I have to deal with the grossness of sex to get as near to him as possible, I will—or I would, if he wanted to, which he doesn’t.”

“And why do you want to be so near to your brother that you’d be willing to have _sex_ with him to achieve that goal?”

Sam isn’t here; he’s sprawled on top of Dean out in the quad, Dean’s hand sun-warm on the small of his back, his laughter rumbling in Sam’s ear. “Dean is the only person I’ve ever cared about being close to. My whole life, until Stanford, I never had anybody but him and Dad, and Dad and I… didn’t get along.”

“Why not?”

“Because we were too similar.” Sam’s had a lot of time to think about this, but the words coming out of his mouth still surprise him. “We’re both stubborn, and whenever we ended up on opposite sides of an issue—I didn’t want to share Dean with him; I didn’t want to join the family business…”

Dr. Patel makes another note. “According to your intake paperwork from yesterday, you and Dean had a falling-out recently that precipitated your suicide attempt. Can you tell me about that?”

His mouth twists. “He wants me to be like him and Dad. He basically told me that he wants me to drop out of Stanford and rejoin him on the road—he and Dad don’t get along as well as he likes to think, and I think he thinks that if I come back, I’ll glue the family back together and it’ll be the three of us and we’ll all be happy. And I want more than anything to _be with him_ again, but I can’t do it his way—and I just sort of realized that we can’t ever be together because what he wants out of the relationship is always going to look different from what I want out of it. So I told him to go. And then I had a meltdown and thought, well, I would rather be dead than be without him, and dying was the only way to get out of living without him.”

“If he were here right now, what would you say to Dean?”

Sam looks Dr. Patel dead in the eye. “I imagine talking to him every second of every day, but really, if he were here, I wouldn’t say anything to him. I wouldn’t trust myself not to say more things that I regret.”

* * *

Acute psychiatric care isn’t as bad as Sam thought it was going to be. He doesn’t agree with Dr. Patel’s diagnosis (borderline personality disorder), and she doesn’t listen to him when he tries to argue the point, which kind of sucks, but he’s only here for a week, and it’s not like anyone in this place can have any bearing on what happens to him after discharge. Every day, he goes to morning check-in, group therapy, and his psychoeducation workshops, then generally skips open rec to sit in his room reading the books Brady brought him from their room until Dr. Patel comes to talk to him. After his daily psychiatrist visit are visiting hours and bedtime. Sam usually reads more during this time: he never gets any guests.

He entertains himself fantasizing about all the nasty things he would say to Dean if he came to visit, or else wishing desperately that he and Dean were together and happy. Dr. Patel calls the holding of these two extremes in equal regard an example of irrational, black-and-white thinking, but Sam feels weirdly offended by the idea that neurotypicals shouldn’t ever be able to have contradictory wishes.

 _I_ had _to leave for Stanford_ , he tells the Dean in his mind, the one who rubs his shoulders and listens and always understands exactly what Sam’s trying to get him to hear. _I_ had  _to. I know our relationship is dead because of me, but it was killing me to stay and feel the way I felt and get nothing back._

The real Dean would probably say something like, _I didn’t give you_ nothing  _back_ , to which Sam tells the imaginary Dean, _But there was this whole domain of intimacy I wanted that you couldn’t give me. I know that makes me greedy. I_ know  _that. But I could only stand so much rejection._

He doesn’t allow the Dean in his mind to say what Sam wants him to say, like that he really does love Sam back or that maybe Sam would’ve found out Dean wouldn’t have rejected him if he’d ever tried to make a move. Sam can’t afford to fantasize that way because it makes him want to talk to Dean too badly— _remember what happened last time_ —but he allows the Dean in his head to say he’s sorry, and wrap his arms around Sam’s waist from behind, and envelop him in his scent, the one that’s burned into Sam’s memory like film.

* * *

Sam’s psychoeducation workshops largely draw from something called dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, which to his understanding couches skills from the more popular cognitive behavioral therapy in the language of a culturally appropriated rip-off of Buddhism. There’s a lot of meditation and counting of breaths and relaxation exercises. No, really, a _lot_ of them. Sam thinks he’s going to leave this place with _in-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four-five-six-seven, out-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight_ permanently etched into his brain like some kind of auditory tattoo.

He goes to a workshop on anger where he learns that his anger style is _avoidant_ and _sudden_ —building in silence until it cyclically snaps. “Breathe in slowly,” instructs the therapist leading the session. “Focus on a time when you were angry.”

Well, that’s easy; Sam’s angry right now.

“Find where that anger lives in your body, and focus on it. It might be in your chest, or your waist, or the space where air fills your back.”

What? Sam’s pretty sure his anger lives in his brain, like all of his emotions.

“Put one hand over it.”

Sam opens his eyes to find the other dozen or so people in the room mesmerized by their apparently physical anger, their hands over their bellies or wherever. Just for the sake of avoiding attention, he places one of his hands over his upper chest and shuts his eyes again.

He’s angry at Dean for not loving Sam back. He’s angry at Dean for leaving. He’s angry at Dean for so many things, and yet verbalizing them in that last awful fight only served to make things so much worse. Sam isn’t _here_ right now; he’s in a field off the side of the road, backed up against the car they all practically lived in, Dean’s hands running through his hair.

After the anger workshop is lunch. Sam scans the trays on the cart for his name and, finding his order, takes one of the last available seats across from a curly-haired woman that Sam recognizes from group therapy.

“Look who decided to eat with us peasants here in the commons instead of his room for once,” she teases with a smile.

Sam smiles back. “What can I say? The crown can be lonely.”

“Gets boring in here, doesn’t it?”

Sam shrugs. “’S not so bad. My roommate brought me some books. I’ve been rereading _Order of the Phoenix_ for the hundredth time.”

“Seven is the best, but I can see why someone might like five for the whole government-conspiracy, rage-against-the-machine angle.”

“Mostly I identify with all of Harry’s rage-yelling in this one. Makes me feel like there’s somebody in the world who knows how I feel in my head all the time.”

She grins at him, talking around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “So you’re with me on the whole anger being in your _head_ thing?”

“You mean that anger breathing exercise we just did? Yeah,” says Sam, laughing incredulously. “Yeah, that was—that was pretty out there.”

“Don’t let our overlords hear you saying that, though,” the woman says, and Sam ducks his head and smiles again.

* * *

Sam doesn’t define himself in _opposition_ to the staff here, but he doesn’t find it easy to connect with them, either. Like his social worker, Alexis, who meets with him on his fourth day here to start going over his treatment plan and his discharge plan, and who keeps asking him to tell her _more_ when he thinks he’s already exhausted the subject he’s telling her about.

“What are some of the things you want to work on during your time here?”

“Uh… well, not being so obsessed with my brother, obviously. I mean, I know I’m not just going to get over it in ten days, but—figure out a starting point, at least, and healthier ways to think about it.”

“How have you been thinking about it?”

“Um, I’m angry a lot of the time. And sad.”

“How so? What are the _thoughts_ associated with those feelings?”

“I… think about how much I miss him and how much I want him to be here with me.”

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“I don’t know, I just miss him!”

Dr. Patel prescribes an antidepressant that has Sam feeling at least a _little_ better after a few days, although she cautions him not to be discouraged, as he likely won’t feel the full effect of the drug for up to a month. Still, he’s starting to find it easier to get out of his room and to want to do other things, like work on jigsaw puzzles in the lounge or work out on one of the two treadmills they have in the activity room. There’s even a computer available for patients to sign up to use, and Sam spends a fifteen-minute block catching up on all the emails he’s managed to miss in the less than a week that he’s been here.

He talks about Dean to Dr. Patel and Alexis, but he can’t stand to bring him up during group therapy and subject himself to a room full of people’s opinions about incestuous feelings. Dr. Patel keeps scolding him for this, but he manages to get back into her good graces by reporting that he’s been venturing outside of his room.

On the sixth evening, Brady stops by—Sam’s first visitor. He uncomfortably hovers in the doorway of Sam’s room for a few moments before entering and settling down in the armchair across from the bed that Sam’s sitting in. “I brought you more books,” says Brady awkwardly. “The front desk staff seemed pretty swamped, so it might be a minute before they approve them and bring them down.”

“No problem. Thanks.”

Brady nods. “So what’s it like being in here? Dodging Nurse Ratcheds everywhere you turn?”

Laughing, Sam replies, “Nah, it’s not so bad. Private room, private bathroom, custom meals brought to you—this is four-star hotel living, right here.”

“Good. Good.” Brady smiles thinly. “Listen, a group of us were thinking about coming on the weekend, probably Sunday—would you be okay with that? Just, you know, Robin and Veronica, Dave, Becky and Zach…”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great, Brady, thanks.”

Brady pauses. “Everyone really misses you. You scared us all pretty bad, doing what you did.”

“I know.” Sam closes his eyes. “It’s going to get better from here. It just has to.”

* * *

Sam’s got a room full of visitors when Dean shows up, because of course he does. His laughter dies on his lips as he catches sight of Dean in the doorway, scruffing up his spiky hair and chewing on his lip. “Dean?”

“Hey, kiddo.”

There’s an incredibly uncomfortable pause, and then Zach says, “Let’s give you two some space. C’mon, guys.”

The Stanford crowd files out of the room, and Dean shuffles into it. He stands there for another few seconds, then walks purposefully up to where Sam’s seated on the bed and practically drags Sam into a bone-crushing hug, crouched on his knees on the hard linoleum floor. “Don’t you fucking _ever_ do something like this again. You hear me? _Never_. The doctors said we almost lost you, Sammy. I…”

But Sam isn’t here right now; he’s with Dean, the Dean in his head, sprawled in his lap in the apartment they share, his shirt off and skin pressed up to Dean’s everywhere he can reach. “This doesn’t change anything,” he manages to spit out, hating himself, hating his life. “You still can’t be in my life. You still _left_ me.”

Dean pulls back, frowning. “ _Left_ you? I seem to remember _you_ being the one who told _me_ to get out.”

“Because _you_ wouldn’t accept me the way I am. Because _you_ put Dad and hunting in front of me _every_ damn time that it mattered.” He knows the words he’s saying are burning down what’s left of the bridge between him and Dean, and he wishes they weren’t true, wishes he could stop himself from divulging them. He isn’t here; he’s in their apartment, sitting on the floor of the kitchen and laughing; he’s…

“I did _not_ put you last. I love you more than life _itself_ , Sammy; why can’t you see that?”

Sam stares up into Dean’s beautiful face and imagines things are so, so different, and he pulls Dean down by the flannel for a ruined kiss that lasts barely a few seconds before Dean’s twisting his face away. “That’s why. That’s _always_ been why.”

“Sammy, I love you so much, but you’re scaring me, kiddo. I can’t…”

“Yeah, I know you can’t,” says Sam in a clipped voice. “Do us all a favor and just get out, won’t you?”

Dean goes. Seeing the back of him isn’t nearly as satisfying as Sam expected it to be.

When he thinks it’s safe and Dean must be really gone, he ventures out of the room. He’s not sure whether his friends are still hanging around somewhere waiting for him, but he doesn’t really care; his desire to plaster on a smile and keep acting social is less than zero right now. Eventually, he wanders into the day lounge, where the curly-haired woman is sprawled on the couch watching HGTV.

“They play this in the waiting room at my psychiatrist’s office,” she says when she turns her head around and spots him. “Makes me feel safe. What’s up with you?”

Sam knows she means it in a casual way, but he still flinches. “I’m pretty sure I just alienated my brother and destroyed what was left of my relationship with him.”

“Sucks. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” Sam says, and he’s surprised to find that it really does feel okay, or at least like it’s going to be okay in the imaginable future. He doesn’t need the real Dean when the Dean in his head will always, unconditionally, be what he needs him to be. He smiles. “I’m Sam, by the way. Sam Winchester. Suicide attempt.”

“I’m Jessica Moore. Psychotic break.”

“Nice to meet you properly, Jessica.”

“Oh, please, call me Jess,” she says. “All my friends call me Jess.”

She pats the cushion next to her, and Sam takes a seat, grinning at her before he settles in to watch some houses get renovated. He pushes down a funny feeling that they’re going to become good friends one day.

**Author's Note:**

> I know in canon Brady was supposed to have introduced them, but hang in there with me on this one.


End file.
